But fixed-income revenue of more than $2 billion this quarter—a performance that beat Goldman Sachs' $1.6 billion by a handy margin—has investors overjoyed. With an hour left to go in the trading day Thursday, Morgan shares were up more than 12 percent, at roughly $24.

Part of the credit, said Morgan executives in calls with investors, goes to fixed-income chief Ken DeRegt, who finally appears to be turning the business around after years of management stumbles and an embarrassing multi-billion dollar loss four years ago.

Morgan raised its value at risk (the amount of capital it could lose on a given day) a little bit to respond to what they called increased client traction and activity, said Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, and the firm saw solid results in rates-trading and credit, among other areas.

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But part of Morgan's relative success is also due to an accounting change at Goldman.

Since late last year, Goldman has been stripping out key parts of its fixed-income business, including its special situations group, into a newly-formed investing and lending unit.

It's a move that has slashed revenues in the stand alone fixed income, currency and commodities division, which combined with an underperformance this spring, led to a year-over-year 53 percent drop this past quarter.

Despite that, this quarter remains a win for Morgan. Adding Goldman's FICC revenues to the debt-related portion of its investing and lending revenues that were reported earlier this week makes for a total of about $1.8 billion—still a few hundred million shy of where Morgan finished.